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Showing posts with label Nicholson Baker. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nicholson Baker. Show all posts

Saturday, 2 March 2013

a story about the rest








































I just finished reading Nicholson Baker’s novel The Anthologist. It’s the story of a contemporary poet who is in love with rhyme and metre. At times it reads like an essay packaged as a novel; an informed discussion of modern poetry wrapped up in the bow of a story.

But at its core, it’s a story about the rest. In music, in poetry, in the creative process. A rest is an absence that punctuates the presence, the presentness; that gives form to the flow. A rest sustains the art; gives it breath.








"the necessary tapping of the toe"


Poetry is language with music in it.

Generally I’m not much of a fan of poetry with rhyme or a structured rhythm to it. I want the beauty of the words to be all there is; the meaning to be the only structure.

I feel like forcing words into a measure results in something that is contrived at best. At worst, it reads like a Hallmark card. Saccharine and sing-song-y.

But then.

I love a great song lyric. And lyrics have to scan. They have to have a musicality, a rhythm, a repetition to them. A structure. And for the most part, they are punctuated with rhyme. The gaps may be filled in with nonsense words, and yet we all sing along.

Perhaps it is "a mistake to forget about the necessary tapping of the toe." (Nicholson Baker, The Anthologist, page 225)